Wednesday 23 October 2013

Financial Secretary 財務秘書 Hsu Yin Man 許彥文

Stance: Negative

Opinions:

HKU has been admitting non-local students for over a decade since 1999. Despite the

University’s efforts in promoting an internationalised environment in the campus, many

members of the society have been dissatisfied with the increasing intake of non-local

students. Some of them suggest that the admission quota of local universities should be

reserved to local students as the university is subsidised by the taxpayers in Hong Kong.

However, they might as well have neglected the benefits brought about by non-local students.

As a local student, I must say that my university life would have been totally different were

there not non-local students in the university.

Firstly, mainland and overseas students who are admitted to HKU are often elites in their own

countries due to the scarce places available to them. They can offer positive competition in

academic aspect. Some of the local students even find them as a target to fight for. Since the

number of admission per application for non-local students (~4%) is still far behind that of

local students (~20%), there is still a room to further increase the intake of non-local students

to further improve the academic standards of the university.

Moreover, the cultural exchange between local and non-local students is very valuable to us.

The university is basically the first time in the life for many students to have daily interaction

with students with other cultural backgrounds. Through communication and spending time

together, students can effectively broaden their horizons.

However, these benefits could only be further achieved if there could be a plethora of

international students from all over the world, instead of focusing or having more of a certain

group of students, i.e. mainland students in the current situation.

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